Gran Bahia Principe Ambar — Hotel Review Rating: 3.5 Pearls

Oyster Review Summary

Photos and review by Dipayan G., Oyster Expert Hotel Investigator.
Updated: May 21, 2010

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Rooms at Gran Bahia Principe Ambar

Oyster Hotel Review

 Scene

This more luxurious portion of the sprawling Gran Bahia Principe complex is exclusive to guests ages 18 and up. Equipped with its own separate lobby, four restaurants, gym, spa, pool, and beachfront, it's a self-sufficient resort. The Ambar's silver wristband grants access to the rest of the Gran Bahia Principe, but other guests cannot enter the Ambar's quarter. But its about a 15-minute walk through a confusing maze of hedges and guest-rooms to the disco or tennis courts or the massive sports complex (or, you can just wait 15 minutes and take the resort's shuttle).

The main advantage is the quiet. There are no kids splashing in the pool, crying on the beach, or throwing tantrums in the restaurants. But for some guests, this section of the complex can be a little boring. In the evening there's nothing to do after dinner besides swilling drinks at the lobby bar. Guests who want to dance, watch an Afro-tastic rendition of "Saturday Night Fever" or sing "My Heart Will Go On" painfully off-key must head over to main resort.

The complex is massive, with an outdoor mall, five swimming pools, two tennis courts, two spas, and 18 restaurants. It's so massive that many guests, and even staffers, regularly get lost. This is every guest's first and biggest complaint, but when this is all there is to complain about, it's a pretty good sign.

 Service

Staff at main desk and in the restaurants spoke English, French, German, and Spanish. In fact, my waiter was really excited to speak to me in French...and vaguely disappointed that I clearly hadn't paid enough attention back in the day.

Guests I interviewed said they were impressed by how diligently the staff cleaned the grounds. In fact, one guest said that they cleaned his room up to two times a day! I can't attest to this myself because I hung a "do not disturb" sign on my door, but hey, the sign worked (which is a lot more than I can say for some other places).

The Ambar also has 24-hour room service. In reality, however, choices are limited to a snack-heavy menu with no actual entrées. And there's usually a 45-minute wait involved. Getting a bottle to my room, however, took two calls and more than an hour of waiting. On the plus side, breakfast the next day took only 15 minutes to arrive at my door.

A group of friends from Toronto whom I interviewed said when the staff found out that one of them had a birthday, they decorated the room with balloons and even brought in a cake. Sadly, they decorated the wrong room! But still, it's the thought that counts, right?

In contrast to the guests at the main resorts who complained of shirts and cash that had been stolen from their rooms, guests at the Ambar confessed to regularly leaving their iPods and the wallets out on their bed stands. I wouldn't recommend this, but I was happy to learn that my cameras wouldn't get filched if I'd forgotten to hide them away.

 Location

A less than 30-minute taxi ride (about $30) from Punta Cana International Airport

The Gran Bahia is an enormous resort -- so enormous that the staff regularly gets lost! Ordinarily, this would be appalling. But with three enclaves that each have their own lobby (the Punta Cana, Bavaro, and Ambar), an outdoor mall, five swimming pools, two tennis courts, two spas, and 18 restaurants, I can hardly blame them. Still, it's every guest's first and biggest complaint

The Ambar is at the far end of the larger resort with its own access to the beach. It's a good 10- to 15-minute walk from the restaurants, bars, and discotheque over at the Punta Cana and the Bavaro. Taking the free shuttle halves the time, but it can take up to 15 minutes for it to show up in the first place.

Still, size offers a degree of privacy -- few resorts are large enough to afford an adults-only area that's a self-sufficient resort in and of itself, with its own restaurants, bars, spa, pool, and beachfront. Unless guests want more of a variety, they never really have to leave Ambar's embrace.

 Beach

This broad, powdery stretch extends all the way from Ambar down to the family-friendly beachfront by the Punta Cana and Bavaro enclaves. In fact, it's perhaps the broadest and longest beach I visited in the D.R.! It's open and very lightly populated around the Ambar, but as the beach winds down toward the rest of the Gran Bahia Principe complex, it steadily gets filled with families. Honestly, the beach by the Ambar is probably the only place where you can find a chair in less than minutes!

There's a fairly active water-sports scene here, though you technically have to go off the property to rent anything from the vendors at the far end of the beach. The Ambar's slice of the beach borders the end of the resort, with several water-sports vendors hawking their services past the boundary. I saw plenty of people booking rides through them, and they seem perfectly safe, but remember that they're not affiliated with the resort so there's no real guarantee.

The resort, however, organizes trips to a floating water park way out on the water, where you can zip down a massive waterslide. Even better, they'll immortalize the memory by filming you and sending a copy of the DVD to your guestroom for $35. As for pictures of this floating city? Unfortunately you're just going to have to take my word for it. Cameras + waterslides = disaster.

 Rooms

Guest-rooms at the Ambar -- and they're all the same type -- are grouped together in 11 three-story buttercup-yellow buildings connected by paved pathways weaving through the resort's strictly disciplined gardens.

Rooms are large, perhaps a little larger than my room at the Occidental Grand or the Melia Caribe Tropical. An archway serving as a border between the balcony and sitting area -- with a padded platform that acts like a sofa -- and the bedroom. The bedroom area is undeniably beautiful, and comes with either one king or two full-size beds. The beds all have four posts and a canopy. Well, technically the linen cloth tied with a ribbon over the bed frame isn't a real canopy, but it certainly looks nice. The beds themselves are comfortably plush with decent -- if not top-count -- sheets and pretty, flowered bedspreads.

Each room is equipped with a high-quality Phillips flat-screen TV with a full range of international (predominantly American) channels. The mini-fridge sports some bottles of water, beer, and soda (all free), but there's no liquor. There's no Wi-Fi or wired Internet, but with a room this large and comfortable, it's probably best to be without such daily distractions, no?

The closet, hidden behind a set of wooden shutters, has ample storage space with an ironing board, iron, beach towels, two robes, several hangers, and an electric safe (unlike most Dominican resorts).

Bathrooms, done up in white and dark marble, come with a generously sized Jacuzzi in the corner with three jets on either side (ideal for a couple), and a separate shower stall with both a handheld and a rainfall showerhead. The toilet is in a small closet by the sink with a scale placed mockingly at its doorstep. The nerve -- a scale in an all-inclusive!

The medium-size balconies are just about large enough to fit in a couple of chairs and have a view of the resort grounds and the neighboring buildings. But since none of the buildings are up by the beach, guests don't be get any real ocean views.

 Features

I've said it before, but just in case the point hasn't stuck -- the Gran Bahia Principe is huge! Absolutely humungous! You could probably live out here all hobo-like and keep turning up at buffets and bathing on the beach and no one would notice! (For legal reasons, I'll ask that you don't attempt this.)

Anyhoo, while the rest of the resort is pretty daunting, the Ambar is like a compact version of the larger property with its own swimming pool, beach, gym, and spa. Having a kid-less swimming pool is a major plus. Just quiet grown-ups idly floating around without any kids splashing about or trying to drown each other. The pool itself is half the size of the enormous one over on the the family-friendly side (read about it in the review of the Gran Bahia Principe Punta Cana), but it's the same set-up -- loosely lagoon-shaped with Jacuzzis bubbling on the corners. There's a broad deck surrounding the pool with plenty of lounge chairs but no cabanas or substantial shade. The nearby snack bar with its leafy table-side canopies is the closest alternative.

I met a wedding party at the spa down and around the corner from the lobby. A much smaller building than the larger spa over on the main property, the bride to be and her bridesmaids were all perfectly happy with their hair and makeup and looking forward to the day ahead.

The Ambar's small gym is at the bottom of a flight of stairs and is divided into two mirrored rooms, one for cardio workouts and the other for lifting weights. The cardio side definitely has more equipment, with stationary bikes far outnumbering the treadmills. Over on the weight-training side, there are fewer options, with only one rack of free-weights and a handful of machines. Still, all the equipment is well-maintained and relatively modern. The two trainers at the gym are also a major plus.

For the disco, karaoke, and shopping village, guests have to head over to the main property.

 Family

It's an adults-only resort, so guests can't bring any of the brood unless they're 18 or older. Still, I saw a couple of families with college-age children on vacation. There's also a smattering of 20- and 30-somethings, but in general the resort seems to cater to a slightly more senior crowd (as in the I-don't-want-to-babysit-my-grandkids crowd). Have kids? Check out the Gran Bahia Punta Cana next door.

 Cleanliness

Squeaky-clean. So spotless that I was surprised that it wasn't built just for my arrival. Fellow guests on TripAdvisor agree -- it's neat-freak heaven!

 Food

The food is superb. The Porto Fino restaurant was hands down the best dinner I'd had at any all-inclusive in the Caribbean. The "fish surprise" and lasagna were perfectly cooked and served without the usual overreliance on salt and spices, as if often the case in all-inclusives. The dining environment -- a set up that is a constant at the three à la cartes -- is spacious and elegant with most of the tables on a slightly raised platform in the middle of a large dining room with a statue bearing a lamp in the center. If the Italian food here and the Mediterranean menu at El Olivo next door aren't to your liking, head over to Don Pablo by the lobby for a taste of "gourmet" local cuisine. Being strapped for time -- and stomach space -- I wasn't able to test out all three à la cartes, so if you've eaten there, write a review and let us know!

Palmyra, the Ambar's buffet restaurant, is open for all three meals and has a different theme every day -- like Italian, Caribbean, or American. The buffet has a pretty impressive selection to choose from, though the array is on par with less froufrou joints like Natura Park and the Occidental. Still, it's much better than the buffet at the pricier Melia Caribe Tropical.

The Ambar has three à la carte restaurants that are covered by the all-inclusive fee but have to be booked in advance. As a courtesy, the resort automatically books guests at restaurants ahead of time -- I got the Italian Porto Fino and Mediterranean El Olivo -- but you can always change the reservation if you wish. This is a huge advantage over most resorts, which either force you to line up at the crack of dawn each day to reserve a table (as at the Riu or Iberostar resorts), or have no reservation system at all, meaning you have to show up at the restaurant as soon as it opens, wait for an hour, and cross your fingers that a table is still available (as at the Victoria Golf Resort). In addition to the Ambar's three restaurants, guests can eat at any of the six à la carte restaurants at the Gran Bahia complex. Pop over to the review of the Gran Bahia Punta Cana to scope out your options.

Between meals, guests can head over to the snack bar by the pool. It's a little burger-centric, but there's a salad and fruit bar to balance things out.

The Ambar, unlike the other resorts in the Gran Bahia complex, has 24-hour room service. In reality, however, one's choices are limited to a snack-heavy menu with no actual entrees to choose from. Plus, there's usually a 45-minute wait involved. Getting a bottle of water to my room, for example, took two calls and more than an hour of waiting. On the plus side, breakfast the next day only took 15 minutes to arrive at my door.

On a final note, all restaurants at the Gran Bahia require guests to apply a generous dollop of the Purell hand sanitizer by the door before dining. I was told that it was for health reasons, but I still haven't decided whether I should be comforted or freaked out by this! These are the only resorts anywhere in the D.R. that force guests to do this.

 Drinks

Get a cup of tea or coffee -- and mix in a spot of gin -- at the lobby bar where incoming and outgoing guests relax during the day. In the evenings, the scene livens up a bit with a gentleman playing such classics as "Lady in Red" muzak-style while some couples leisurely dance across the lobby.

The à la carte restaurants and lobby bar all serve international brands of liquor, but the buffet restaurant only serves Dominican brands.

 Bottom Line

The quiet, adults-only (18+), 400-room Ambar is a self-sufficient enclave within an enormous, three-resort complex. With its own superior-quality restaurants, quiet pool, white-sand beach, sparkling gym, quality spa, and huge, romantic suites, it's an elegant alternative to wilder, kid-filled resorts. Still, fun at the disco is a 15-minute hike away.